


trellises

by apotheosizing



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Missing Scene, Other, Recurring Dreams: The Fire Sermon, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 00:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13178298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apotheosizing/pseuds/apotheosizing
Summary: A fifth dream about a garden.





	trellises

**Author's Note:**

> wines and spices sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g

You dream that you are seated in an immaculate parlour, face-to-face with a gilded portrait, the eyes of which bore into your own. When you look away, spots of light dance behind your eyelids, like a dazed new arrival from the Surface who had spent too long desperately searching for sunlight in the false-stars above.

A fire is roaring in the fireplace, inching slowly from a welcome heat to a stifling one. The conflicting impulses to pull away from the mounting flame and to pitch your hands into them rise within you. The portrait offers nothing but an unsympathetic _tsk_ at your indecision before its occupant stalks off to avoid what you would figure to be the peeling of its paint had there not been something reflective in the angle of the hearthlight that helpfully supplied the word _mirror_ to your mind.

You rise from your chair, a feat made easier by the fact that it has already burnt to ashes beneath you, and drift to the front door before the heat can crack the glass of the mirror and confirm what you'd gleaned.

The honeyed garden, walled off from the burning estate, is familiar - it has been, you reflect, the only pleasant part of these dreams that you can remember. It seems to be enjoying a different season to the damp assemblage of months that passes for spring down here, frost like icing on each flower. The babbling fountain of sparks _crackles_ and _pops_ behind you. You inhale the mingling scents of camphor, marjoram, and tarragon and think of home.

The fire has finished devouring the house and new sparks are catching the unfrozen roots of the grass. But this is not a consuming blaze. The stubborn icicles gave way to the flames with a melting puff that resembled a sigh of resigned but affectionate allowance. All of a sudden, you feel that you are intruding.

The feeling lingers after you wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Fallen London is © 2015 and ™ Failbetter Games Limited: www.fallenlondon.com. This is an unofficial fan work.


End file.
